Sikuli: using GUI screenshots for search and automation

13 years 10 months ago

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We present Sikuli, a visual approach to search and automation of graphical user interfaces using screenshots. Sikuli allows users to take a screenshot of a GUI element (such as a toolbar button, icon, or dialog box) and query a help system using the screenshot instead of name. Sikuli also provides a visual scripting API for automating GUI interactions, using screenshot patterns to direct mouse and keyboard events. We report a web-based user study showing that searching by screenshot is easy to learn and faster to specify than keywords. We also demonstrate several automation tasks suitable for visual scripting, such as map navigation and bus tracking, and show how visual scripting can improve interactive help systems previously proposed in the literature. ACM Classification: H5.2 [Information interfaces and presentation]: User Interfaces. - Graphical user interfaces. General terms: Design, Human Factors, Languages

Tom Yeh, Tsung-Hsiang Chang, Robert C. Miller

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